Wednesday, January 06, 2016

If you're raped by an Arab in Cologne, the government will try to cover for the Arab

Yesterday, German authorities came clean about a horrifying event that took place three days earlier. A New Year’s Day event at a square in front of Cologne’s main train station where people gathered to watch fireworks over the Rhine turned into a nightmare. Firecrackers were tossed into the crowd and as the throng fled, gangs of several hundred young men acting in what police said was a “coordinated” manner, assaulted what may have been as many one hundred people. Many women, who were circled and isolated as the gangs broke into separate groups, were sexually assaulted and/or robbed.

This sort of thing is, as the New York Times reported, unprecedented in its size and scale for a comparable crime in a modern European or American city. But what makes it particularly problematic is a salient fact that may have been responsible for the three-day delay before officials acknowledged what happen: The perpetrators were reported by witnesses to be “North African or Arabic” in their appearance.